IN APRIL 1993 I received a strange
request in the post. John Hagedorn - an American educationist-cum- percussionist
then based in Alexandria, Egypt - wrote asking me to research the Malayan
origins of the legend of "A Bao A Qu." Hagedorn's travel-writer colleague,
Christopher Green, had unearthed this obscure tale from Jorge Luis Borges's
1967 Book of Imaginary Beings. Borges claimed
he had found the "A Bao A Qu" story in the appendix of C.C. Iturvuru's
1937 treatise,
On Malay Witchcraft. I finally tracked down Borges's
version of the "A Bao A Qu" story in the University of Malaya library -
so I can vouch for the reliability of Green's succinct summary of this
hoary tale:

To
see the most lovely landscape in the world, a traveler must climb the Tower
of Victory in Chitor[Green says he found on a map
of India a town named Chitor.] A winding staircase
gives access to the circular terrace on top, but only thosewho do not believe in the legend
dare climb the tower. On the stairway there
has lived since the beginning of time a being sensitive to the many shadesof the human soul known as A Bao
A Qu. It sleeps until the approach of a traveler andsome secret life within it begins
to glow and its translucent body begins to stir. As the traveler climbs
the stairs, the being regains consciousness and follows at the traveler's
heels, becoming more intense in bluish color and coming closer to perfection.
But it achieves itsultimate form only at the topmost
step, and only when the traveler is onewho has already attained Nirvana,
whose acts cast no shadows. Otherwise, the being
hesitates at the final step and suffers at its inability to achieve perfection["Its moan is a barely audible
sound, something like the rustling of silk."]It tumbles to the first step as
the traveler climbs down and collapses weary and shapeless,awaiting the approach of the next
traveler. In the course of the
centuries, A Bao A Qu has reached the terrace only once.

For some reason
I felt sure that C.C. Iturvuru (what an amazing name!) had heard the tale
from an Orang Asli. The first person I asked happened to be Seri Pagi (though
I only knew him as Pak Diap then). I gave him a simplified rendering of
the A Bao A Qu legend and waited while the rusty gears of his memory whirred.
His brow furrowed and then he broke into a broad grin, exclaiming in triumph:
"Abang Aku! You mean Abang Aku!" But of course. The
way Orang Asli slur their vowels (especially in the states of Negri Sembilan
and Pahang), Iturvuru might well have heard it as "A Bao A Qu." My Elder
Brother, Abang Aku.* I felt a jolt of electrifying
knowledge. Diap said he remembered hearing a story similar to that when
he was very young. It involved a spiral stairway connecting one dimension
to another. A stairway once used by visiting or incarnating stargods. They
say some got caught out by the calamitous closing of the interdimensional
pathways. Once brilliant stars in their own universe, they fell to Earth
and became ensnared in Time. Some of them ended up just like poor Abang
Aku alias A Bao A Qu. A spirit fragment of cosmos caught in the gravity
of human karma; a glorious starbeing lying inert at the bottom of the stairway
to heaven, dependent on messy human destiny for its own fulfilment. Only one other
Elder seemed to have heard of Abang Aku. Village shaman Sudin Aus kept
nodding sagely when I outlined the A Bao A Qu story to him. Then he smiled
and said, “My Elder Brother is a reference to the Orang Asli. Our spirit
will not be free until the younger races achieve nobility of purpose and
purity of heart.” Almost everyone,
however, was familiar with the cryptic image of the long and winding stairway
to the most wonderful view on Earth.THE A BAO A QU MYTH evoked images
of chakras - energy spirals operating on macro and micro levels - primordial
forces attaining self-awareness, and nebulous notions of some deep alchemical
mystery - an H.P. Lovecraftian vision of the strange, chthonic thoughtfields
from which our familiar symbols sprout. “Abang Aku” brought to mind the
Great Old Ones, ancient squid-like beings central to Lovecraft’s Chthulu
tales. (It also brought to mind Gurdjieff's Kundabuffer. This peculiar
word was coined in the 1920s by the Greek-Russian magician-philosopher,
G.I. Gurdjieff, to explain some "tragic flaw" in Man's genetic programme
which condemns him to futile lifetimes of Sisyphean* struggle, forever
slipping back into robotic animality just when he's on the threshold of
illumination. Some believe that this "Kundabuffer Effect" was deliberately
installed by a somewhat insecure Creator God (or gods), to retard the evolution
of human intelligence and thereby perpetuate a harnessable labour force
on Earth. The Tower of Babel story lends credence to this notion of an
"Almighty Father-God" who, feeling threatened by his mortal creatures'
overweening ambitions, confounds them with a babble of tongues. Another
scenario describes how humanity had its original 12-strand DNA reduced
to two, to confine our consciousness within the physical world.) I sensed that
the A Bao A Qu story offered a key insight into the magical teachings of
the Ancients. At some remote point in the infinite spiral of existence,
an aspect of Spirit found itself trapped in a Promethean*** nightmare loop
of recurring time. Only a self-realized and karma-free human could release
the A Bao A Qu from its eternal yearning for perfection. The Tower of
Victory. Victory over death? Despair? Futility? The magic column of ascension,
located in Chitor. Chita? Chita, cita, cinta, citta. Sanskrit for
a quality difficult to define: essentially, citta means mindstuff, consciousness.Chita
or cita is closely related to cinta, romantic love - desire,
emotions, feelings, longing, love, aspiration. (It could also, by invoking
homophonic licence, be a slurring of cherita - nowadays spelled
cerita
-
which means "story.") In effect one might describe chita as a poetic
symbol for the Imagination, the Desiring Mind. But this is assuming it
is related to Chitor, the town named in the legend of A Bao A Qu. And I
assume it is, because myth is meant to be a malleable, dreamlike substance. The test of
myth-entering keys lies in their emotive resonance when struck. Substituting
“Abang Aku” for “A Bao A Qu,” “Chita” and “cerita” for “Chitor,” and “you”
for “the traveller” - what do we get? A metaphysical conundrum that echoes
in some barely remembered attic of our unconscious. A vague feeling of
déjà vu, of “When did I dream this dream?” Was I the intrepid
traveller, the hero, the messiah, redeemer of gooey amorphous geeks? Or
was I Abang Aku himself, waiting aeon upon aeon for humanity to attain
Buddha and Christ consciousness? Who else would have “already attained
Nirvana,” whose acts would “cast no shadows” - in other words, be completely
free of karmic consequences. And who might this Exalted Being be - if not
our own Noblest Aspect, the Omega point of our Adamic Alpha? That's why Abang
Aku reaches perfection only once. However, his dream body or holoform remains
embedded in the mythic realm as a timely trigger, to awaken anyone who
chances upon the legend to the nature of his or her true purpose on this
Earth.

______________* A. Ghani Ismail,
an ardent scholar of Malay esoteric lore, offers some information which
sheds a whole different light on the A Bao A Qu legend. He suggests
that the phrase in question is actually a slurring of “Ibu Aku” (“My Mother”),
explaining that in pre-Islamic Malay shamanism, the gateway to other
dimensions was via an inner journey through the spiral staircase of the
etheric umbilical cord which reconnects us with our pre-birth experience
of oneness with the Mother. By voyaging beyond the point of our own conception,
we break through the veils of time and space and regain cosmic consciousness.
I thought this variation on the theme warranted inclusion, at least as
a footnote.

** Sisyphean: from Sisyphus,
in Greek mythology a cruel and cunning king of Corinth, who was punished
in Hades by being made to roll a heavy boulder up a steep hill. Every time
he got to the summit, the boulder would roll back down the hill, and Sisyphus
had to repeat the process over and over forever.

*** Promethean: from Prometheus,
in Greek mythology a first-generation god (or Titan) of Fire and Intellect,
who returned the gift of Fire to Mankind (which Zeus the second-generation
Olympian had withheld) - and for that was chained to a rock and his liver
devoured by an eagle every day. Every night, the liver would regenerate
and Prometheus would come back to life, only to have the eagle eat his
liver all over again, and so on, ad infinitum. (It's less gory, but a lot
scarier, when you approach this mythic morsel as a giant metaphor for compulsory
reincarnation: Prometheus is the Soul, the rock is the physical world,
the liver represents a lifetime, and the eagle is the emblem of Higher
Authority or Spiritual Law. As a symbol, the eagle is interchangeable with
the Indonesian garuda, the Chinese phoenix, the Mexican quetzal,
or the Russian firebird, which represents Eternal Return. And Prometheus,
the Fire-Bringer, is often identified with Lucifer, the Light-Bringer.)
From the 'Management' point of view, Prometheus is a subversive element
- but 'Labour' would see him as a cult hero, a freedom fighter, a
System-bucking Little Red Robin Hood!